Procuradores of New Spain 
149 
in that respect, the more so as that which is now asked upon our part is 
founded upon such evident reasons that if the service of God and that of 
your Majesty should cease all would be lost. And all those who have 
reported, collecting and exaggerating ill-treatments of Indians, have kept 
quiet about the many good treatments and good works that have been done 
and are done in New Spain every day, which, in compensation, exceed 
the bad ones of past times, which I admit may have occurred. This can¬ 
not now be judged of, for those who they say did them are not alive, 
and even God, because of the few good ones that he might find in the 
towns which he commanded to be burned, would pardon them. 7 Thus, 
for the measure of perpetuity, what was committed many years ago by 
individual persons, perhaps with reason and necessity, ought not to be 
taken into consideration, for if we look at what is committed in Spain in 
one year, if it were reported jointly, much more scandal would be aroused 
than by all which I admit may have been done for gain in the Indies in 
many years. But we are not now trying to get permission to ill-treat the 
Indians, but to seek a means by which they may be perpetuated, and with 
what we ask it will be done. 
We beg, moreover, that your Majesty command that an examination 
be made of the arguments which we have given. Many others could be 
given why there cannot be perpetuity unless Indians are awarded, for 
there would be no one to cultivate the land or practise trades or work on 
farms, so that there might be profits. Nor will the Spaniards apply them¬ 
selves to it unless they know that they are to have Indians in perpetuity. 
Intercourse with the Spaniards increases trade but there cannot be Span¬ 
iards except in the way that we have said. From these, great riches have 
come and are still drawn every day, which have been drawn, not from 
what the Indians give, but from what the Spaniards who have Indians 
have secured. Besides this, it is a false premise to say that it will be per¬ 
petuated by giving annuities and perpetual incomes to the Spaniards, 
and those who say this do not consider that the basis of where and how 
these incomes are to be provided is lacking. And above all, they do not 
consider that the religious, who have gone there and are still there, and the 
churches are not supported by the Indians but by the Spaniards, and that 
it is with what the Spaniards do that the religious have the means of 
preaching the Christian doctrine. 
It ought also to be considered that nothing is taken nor asked from the 
Indians except what they are able to give. He who has to give tributes of 
the things that are raised among them only gives it when there is enough, 
and those who do not possess this give personal service, which is not in¬ 
jurious to them, either in their souls or their bodies, as well because of the 
idleness from which it frees them, the light work given them, the inter¬ 
course that they receive, and the manners they acquire, as because it has 
always been the custom in those parts since their foundation to have those 
personal services. 
To avoid the possibility of excess, both the one and the other [personal 
service and tribute] may be placed within the limits of reason. And be¬ 
sides the Indians are too intelligent to consent to injury and know how 
to resist it as successfully as educated Spaniards. If those who govern 
